Cloud Technologies

The term cloud-computing entered the mainstream a few years back, but it is no new idea by any means. The cloud's model began in the 1950's as IBM began developing mainframe technology. Now consoles all over the world could alter data at a single access point. In example, with a banking mainframe a single clients account balance may need to be accessed by a teller at a bank, a machine that prints statements and an ATM machine. The data in the account must be identical when accessed in all three cases. This is done by having all the data handled by transactions through one single physical machine, a mainframe. This new machine largely shaped certain industries today such as banks and insurance companies as everyone knows money transferring is all electronic.

Sixty years later we are finding cutting edge ways to use this practice in various businesses.

The explosion of the internet has brought cloud computing to new levels. Data-as-a-service, platform-as-a-service and software-as-a-service are all industries that have bloomed as the cloud continues to grow.

Cloud computing can often times be a catalyst in business models. When a company implements a cloud technology into their business often times it can have amazing consequences. Take Netflix for example. Netflix (NFLX) went public in 2002, their strategy was to attract customers into paying a monthly subscription fee in exchange for movie rentals delivered by mail. Operating costs were being battered by shipping costs on the physical DVD's but the company was profitable. Then they introduced a system where for the same monthly fee a subscriber could stream video directly to their PC. The cost of streaming movies to customers instead of mailing them decreased costs as well as established a product line that would encourage a larger subscriber base. Needless to say interest grew in the company and their stock price soared.

So where will the next cloud system make a huge impact on a company? The company I am keeping an eye on is Microsoft. Microsoft (MSFT) is already the most widely used operating system among PC's with a huge footprint in businesses. Microsoft has a very strong cloud-based product line emerging with SkyDrive, Office 365 and Windows Azure. This combination allows Microsoft to outsource your entire infrastructure-as-a-service. 

Yahoo Answers Delivers

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100508154542AAe2LPl

Cloud computing taking big leaps recently

Anyone who uses Google Docs knows about the recent change to Google Drive. Now if you have a Google account you are entitled to 5 free gigs of cloud space. Pretty impressive when you consider how many millions of people will have access to this. That's a ton of data that has to be stored somewhere remember.
Now today at an earnings conference Oracle's CEO spoke of a large announcement in the next week.

In the company's earnings release, Larry Ellison, Oracle CEO, said the company would announce new features soon.

 "A little more than a week from now we will announce lots of enhancements to the Oracle Cloud," Ellison said.

Google will really have a great product with the integration of Google Docs. They will most likely take on a business model similar to Box, charging for customized and large file storage systems. Oracle will also be "outsourcing hard disk" in a similar fashion more than likely. Let's not leave out Microsoft Roll-out of Windows 8 with Sky Drive in October.

Seems like a good time to be in the cloud computing business.

Western Digital's Helium-Filled HDD

Last week Hitachi (an acquisition of Western Digital) announced their latest development, a hard drive that promises higher capacity at lower cost of ownership through energy consumption. How? By designing a sealed drive and filling the internal gas with helium instead of oxygen.

When a hard drive reads and writes data a little platter is spun to a certain position so a magnetic needle can collect data from that area of the disc. WDC's helium-filled drives promise lower cost of ownership by reducing friction during this spinning and maintaining lower temperatures during run-time. Seems meaningless, but the energy savings running a couple of dozen of these things 24 hours a day really adds up. The company has also announced that the in addition to the decreased cost of ownership capacity of these drives could increase by up to 40% which is up to 5.6TB.

"An enormous portion -- up to 40% -- of the costs in new cloud based data centers will be attributed to operational costs such as power use and floor space, Collins said. Today the bulk of data center costs are capital expenditures, including hardware purchases.
"This is driving a lot of opportunities to differentiate products in the cloud," Collins said. "The attributes of the sealed drive platform make it the ideal foundation for bulk and cold storage applications in enterprise and cloud datacenters."

Lucas Mearian, Computerworld

The drives are on schedule to hit the market in Q1 2013.